52 Health authorities in our cities and villages must be able to justify their demands for adequate financial support before they can expect to obtain adequate appropriations. To assist local authorities to do this, the State department of health, with the State comptroller and the State conference of mayors and other city officials cooperating, appointed a committee to draft a model health budget and a model accounting system for departments, bureaus and boards of health. The model budget we have recommended is very simple, and can be used by the health authorities of consolidated districts and villages as well as those of cities It carries out the recommendations of the best experts on municipal accounting for a budget that is not highly segregated. The accounting system is much more detailed than the budget, as it should be to enable the health official to show to the public and the appropriating body at the end of the year for just what purposes the money allowed him was expended. Since the report was made public some comments on it indicate that health authorities have not generally understood the purpose of the accounting system. It was not the idea of the committee which drafted the report or the two State departments and the mayor's conference which have approved it, that this accounting system should be used by the comptroller, auditor or other accounting officer of the city. It is a departmental accounting system to be used only by the health officer so that he may know at any time how much he is spending, and so that at the end of the year he can give an accurate and detailed accounting of the funds set aside for public health work. In most of our third class cities and villages correct comparative data about appropriations and expenditures for public health work are not obtainable. In fact in some communities it is impossible to learn Per capita appropriation of the seven second class cities of New York state for police, fire and health protection Police $3.32 Police $1.80 Fire $2.62 Police $2.45 Fire $1.96 Police $2.08 Fire $2.50 Health $0.36 how much of the tax levy has been set aside for the health board or bureau or what amount has been spent. In most of these, appropriations for health work are included in the general fund or are made as needed during the year from the contingent fund or are made as needed during the year from the contingent fund. Several city charters so limit the amount to be raised by tax, for municipal purposes other than health work, that they are compelled to include in their health budgets the appropriations for activities which do not properly belong there. One of these cities has a most efficient health officer, but he is constantly harrassed by public criticism of the amount his department is costing. If the appropriations which do not properly belong there were eliminated from his health budget, the people of his city would be satisfied with the amount of real health service they are obtaining for the amount of money actually expended for health purposes. Until proper and necessary charter amendments can be obtained, these cities can use the health budget and accounting system we have recommended and attach thereto a supplemental budget and accounting statement specifying that these appropriations and expenditures, which properly belong in the budgets of other departments of the city or village government, are for additional activities under the jurisdiction of the board, bureau or department. city health budget recently examined we found an appropriation of $1,570 for licensing and impounding dogs, which amount is 14 per cent of the total health budget. In the health budget and accounting system we have prepared, there are included only those activities which are now generally regarded by health authorities as proper public health activities. If a proper budget and accounting system are adopted, it will be possible to ascertain the exact appropriations for and the cost of public health work in each city and village and accurately to compare the cost and appropriations in one community with those in another. This is impossible at the present time. It will help to make public health work more productive by eliminating the burden of financing and conducting activities by boards of health which should be supported and carried on in other ways. Local health authorities will be able to make a satisfactory accounting and will be amply equipped to justify any demand for adequate appropriations. EXIT THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET The old oaken bucket that hung in the well may be dear to the heart, but it's dangerous to the system. The time-honored well-sweep and windlass were one of the picturesque features of the typical Polish landscape -until Polish and American Red Cross sanitarians at the head of the Polish public health work decreed that health was more important than landscapes. Though the bubbling spring by the roadside sounds well in poetry and the maiden drawing water from an old-fashioned well is pretty in pictures, every open well is a potential epidemic breeder. With typhus and cholera raging throughout Poland, these wells are considered by the health authorities a direct means of contagion, exposed as they are to all sorts of contamination. In other cities there is either a misinterpretation or a misconception of what are proper public health activities. In the health budgets of these cities we find appropriations for garbage and ash collection and disposal, maintenance and operation of sewers and sewage disposal plants and various kinds of inspection. In one second class city health budget for this year there are appropriations when they were forced to quit the country we found for garbage collection and inspection total- The American Red Cross experts, who are cooperating with the native government in formulating a per manent health program, have discovered substitutes for the old wells. In the supplies abandoned by the Germans hundred of pump connections, suction joints and valves in salvage warehouses. These will be used in addition to the modern wells which the Americans are constructing in several towns. MEMOIRS OF A FOOD ADMINISTRATOR Tribulations of a federal official whose business it was to decide BY RALPH D. SMITH Federal food administrator for Broome county NE morning shortly after we entered the war I was commanded to appear at the office of a friend of mine who when he greeted me straightened up and tapping the table, his eyes resting on a life size portrait of McKinley, wanted to know what I had done for my country's cause. Replying that I had only indulged in a few emotional flights he informed me that I was to be food adminstrator. authority or no authority, I was running the food business in this county. Soon bundles began dropping in upon me. One day I was informed that there was a package on the ground floor of our office building bigger than Noah's ark. I went down and impressed some of my legal friends into putting the packages, there were several into the elevator. A few men got out of the elevator. On being informed that it was not a freight car I observed that neither was it a cattle car. Then everybody got out. I rode up nonchalantly straddling the packages. They were the pledge cards, the kitchen and window cards, all to be distributed throughout the county. Being finally sworn in the following January I became a representative of both the federal and State food departments operating "But, senator," said I, "What will my through the federal food board, an adminis duties be?" "Like mine, nothing," came the answer, he was chairman of the home defense committee,—“All you'll have to do will be to distribute a few cards." Then he reverently gazed at a picture of Lincoln, said something about my being a patriot,— it sounded like patriarch and in an hour I was on my way to our state capital to hear what it was all about. Being duly announced as food administrator my picture appeared in all the newspapers and people began to joke me about it. The poor fuel administrator and I were dubbed fool administrators. It is true that I had no commission. Only the senator and the newspapers had created me. But I did not care; commission or no commission, no commission, trative body, with offices in New York city. Then appeared the first rules in all our papers, the fifty-fifty rule, the wheatless and meatless days for homes and public eating places, and the five and ten pound rule for sugar sales. It was very confusing at first, the orders would change so often. They fell upon our unlicensed epicureans as manacles would upon an eagle. At once came the period of secret complaints. Everyone accused everyone else. It was a period of bewilderment to most of us. Very often I would summon a violator to my office or go to his place of business and tell him what he had done and would be met with the flat statement that I had but yesterday told him he could do the very thing I was now complaining about. I admit that I had done so much talking that I was often uncertain myself as to just what I had said. Begging and pleading with the public I published and republished the rules. It was all done towards getting a "voluntary cooperation." This idea, expounded at Washington, I urged at length. It was an amusing one to me, that of voluntary cooperation. True, it was the fundamental theory which we wished to have effective through the country, but just the same there were some strong arm principles lurking round about which became tremendously effective. The consumers at first gave us the most trouble. High browed women would demand from their grocer wheat flour without the substitutes or sugar in forbidden lots. Generally they were refused. Then they would claim that they could get accommodated at some other store and would become indignant if he still refused them. I heard I heard of dusty millers nonchalantly throwing bags of wheat flour minus the required substitutes into farmers' wagons as though it were falling in England and France as did manna to the Israelites. Then all the bakers began to complain that their competitors were selling pure wheat bread or bread with substitutes put in with a lady's powder puff while they alone were using the proper mixture. I learned of an unctuous Presbyterian, a banker, who, amid the encircling gloom, slipped up to the rear entrance of a grocery store and inveigled a young boy employee to slip under his auto robe a lonesome fifty pound bag, which, as it peeked out at him on the back seat, indicted him with the big blue letters "P-I-L-L-S-B-U-R-Y-S B-E-S-T." The proprietor told me all about it and I passed it over at that time. This was all in the beginning and the food administration was holding its hand. We were still banking on voluntary cooperation. But so many were careless or indifferent and at length the fact had to be established that if dealers in food products would not voluntarily cooperate with our plans we would make them voluntarily cooperate. The effect of the penalties was wonderful. There were some closings and the Red Cross was enriched. Our theory was a success. Whoever thought out that voluntary idea was a captain, for the way we put it into effect would have been reformed Gehenna. In the early summer I became the greatest man in the county. We had been doing fairly well with our wheat and meat restrictions but not enough in the sugar line. Finally one day in May came the announcement that America must divide with our European friends our normal West Indian supply of sugar and that this meant even greater restrictions in its use. I never realized before what a rumpus the curtailment of a little sweets will make. We had been getting sugar all the winter and spring in five and ten pound lots and observing the rule of two pounds per person per month. Then out came the rule that manufacturers using sugar, retail dealers and large consumers could purchase it only upon the presentation of sugar certificates which were to be allotted them each month by the federal food board. These concerns had to send in applications for their sugar certificates giving certain data upon which their monthly allotment would be made. The applications fell upon the federal food board in tons, trillions of them, from all over the State, and in order to permit such dealers to purchase sugar before they received their certificates the county food administrator was authorized to issue emergency sugar orders to them upon which, in lieu of their certificates, the wholesalers might sell it. My office at once became the headquarters of all desiring such orders or who had any business with the federal food board. They began to pour in at nine o'clock in the morning every day and would come in in droves all day long. I now speak several languages; some of the foreigners still call me "Commissioner Schmitt." I had by this time begun to think that I had won the war. Not so. I soon learned that it had just begun. This was when the canning season came upon us. Everybody knows what the canning slips were and how all who wanted sugar for canning had to sign one when buying it. All signing these slips covenanted that the sugar purchased by them would be used for canning only. It was not, however, until the order came from the federal food board that one could not buy more than twenty-five pounds of sugar for canning unless they obtained a written order from the county food administrator that I ever dreamed that there were so many women in this section of our state. Then started the pilgrimage. Ours is a fairly large county and armies of canners appeared from all sections. They would come Thronging to the appointed place, As, swarming forth from cells within the rock, So from their homes a multitude along our spacious streets in mighty throngs moved toward the food administrator's office. They would fly in and out of the elevators humming and buzzing. My offices were on the fourth floor. In they would come in droves all through the summer and fall. One came in on a late November day. She demanded a canning order. I asked her if she wanted to can icicles. Replying that she must have sugar at once to can some cranberries which would otherwise spoil she imperiously walked out with an order for ten pounds. My offices were none too large and the congestion at times was shocking. They became a rendezvous. The phrase "meet me at the food administrators'" became current. I became a prophet, a seer, a delphic oracle, and a specialist in dietetics. A book might be written on canners. There were all kinds; demure ones, militant ones, coquettish ones, ones with spirtual faces, like the Sistine Madonna's, who would open their big, blue, liquid eyes at me and piously ask for a third twenty-five pounds of sugar for canning. I felt that women with such faces could not tell a falsehood, at least to the food administrator, and so taking them at their saintly word, that the sugar was to be used for canning only, I fear at times the orders were shuffled out like playing cards. But what could a chivalrous food administrator do? Then there were the home bodies, plump comfortable looking, the motherly, wifely kind, the kind that fills the big arm chairs, capsizes boats, and blocks the doorways. There was no question about this kind either, I thought. They looked truthful at least. Then there was a class which always reminded me of Mona Liza. When one of these would ask for a second canning order she would squint a little looking me right in the eye and then the compressed smile of Leonardo's famous minx,- I always thought that Italian woman had just been caught at something—would slowly settle about the corners of her mouth. Questioning these sharply as to their using for canning alone the first twenty-five pounds given them and invariably receiving an unfaltering and baffling affirmative across would go the order and with a sly look of triumph out they would go. Then there was the Marie Antionette, Nell Gwynne class, pretty and pert and with that suggestion of insouciance, if not brazenness, with which such dispensations are likely to be accompanied. In they would prance with their smart suits and hats, gallop around the office and at last trippingly demand their canning orders. I was aghast at these, frightened to death at them. I saw our armies and all European friends starving, the whole structure of the food administration crumbling and the war lost through such |